In the event of a system failure, restoration of the system may require a restoration of not only data, but also an underlying file system, an operating system, and other components. In the event of a system failure caused by a hardware issue, a fire, a flood, or other events, it may be necessary to restore an operating system, file system, data, and other components to one or more new hardware platforms. Installing an operating system, a file system, and other components required for restoration of a failed system on a new system is sometimes referred to as a bare metal restore. Restoration of a file system on a new system may require an identical configuration between the new system and an old system. This may require the availability of identical hardware, which may also need to be configured identically. For example, a file system using a certain level of RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks) with a certain amount of storage may not be capable of restoration on a different configuration. Additionally, even if an identically configured hardware platform is available, it may be required to first determine the configuration of the failed system. This may be difficult to determine in an orderly and time effective manner from backups and documentation. Furthermore, certain configurations of failed systems may utilize mirroring, spare disks, and other resources. It may be cost prohibitive for a corporation or other entity to maintain an identical configuration on a secondary system.
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that there are significant problems and shortcomings associated with current file system restoration technologies.